Your mouth was not always song.It was the living room cracked openinto a tilted ravine,where you flew and I satin the deep and nodded as neededin our near conversations,

or it was the taxi cab or the museum, twistedduring one of our long visitsinto a sudden maze irreparable,

when inspired by a naked sculpture,you were reminded of the time Poseidonpunished Odysseus and I silently wonderedif they may both drop byfor cardamom tea and sweets in the afternoonand how nice that would be.

With no points of reference, I created my own.

You planted no solicitous sign posts,nor painted them pretty for a girl child.I hung on your every word,especially the Italian onesand the French ones,but you scattered no bread crumbsfor me to collect and arrivesafely at you.

Bird omniscient!When you soared over our ravine,you cast no shade and I was old enoughto make you coffee,old enough for you to buy me my first bra,old enough to be beautiful,

but when you told me stories,no, not bedtime stories, I was too old for that,you omitted the determiners, the demonstrative pronounswent missing and I rummagedand rummaged through your wordsbut without them I could not fit your gorgeousadjectives and adverbs into my jigsaw puzzle,

and they sat in my inept handslike wasted opportunities to love.

I wanted to love Poseidon at the fountain,and Odysseusand Picasso entertainingthe Parisians at Montparnasse.

I was too shy for hyperbolebut before we metI had already memorized loveand the morning star.

Before we met,I used to be enough, just a short while ago,back home where everyone spoke my languageand allowed me to forget my name,

before we met to sit togetherin your living room, live togetherin museums, taxi cabs, hotel roomswhere fresh-cut flowers never diedand I prayed that no one would ask my name.

But I was in it for the long haul,I ate at your splendid table,and adorned it daily with a rose from your garden,and over the years I memorized

the undulations of your love.The often whip and the always caress of itcensored and modeled my becoming.And I was to your liking.

Master sculptor, when you pressed upon me,I fed you spoonfuls of silence,the salve for the lacerations in your mouth.

​Rooja Mohassessy

​Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-American living in California. She is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Pacific University.

Editor's note: Iranian Artist Bahman Mohasses was a prolific artist working in sculpture, assemblage, and painting, as well as theatre and literary translation. He studied, worked and lived between Italy and Iran. He is known as the "Persian Picasso" and is considered by many to be most prominent Iranian artist of the past century. Many of his works were destroyed by the Iranian authorities during the Islamic Revolution, and the artist later destroyed many works himself. Remaining works are rare and in high demand by collectors. The Iranian-American poet Rooja Mohassessy is his niece.